Bilibili's well-known game revenue analyst 'Er Guan' (二观) finally responded to accusations that his Tower of Fantasy lifetime revenue estimates didn't line up with Perfect World's official financial reports. But instead of putting the controversy to rest, his response only fanned the flames.
Here's the crux: Er Guan previously estimated Tower of Fantasy's cumulative revenue at roughly 4.07 billion RMB (~$560M USD). However, players cross-referenced this with Perfect World's 2023 Annual Report, which showed Tower of Fantasy revenue at 4B+ RMB — but the official report only covers through the end of 2023. Er Guan's 4.07B figure, as it turns out, includes Q1 2024 revenue data. In other words, he padded his estimate with three extra months of revenue just to barely match the official number.
Players who did the math found that after removing the 2024 data, Er Guan's own numbers actually come to roughly 3.96 billion RMB — leaving a noticeable gap with the official 4B+. The most devastating one-liner from the comments section nailed it perfectly: 'If you're being generous, the total isn't far off. If you're being honest, he's wrong every single year.' The point being: his year-by-year estimates were inflated for 2022 and deflated for 2023, but the errors conveniently cancelled each other out in the aggregate.
Digging deeper, some players pulled up Er Guan's older video data and pointed out that even his latest numbers appear to be 'padded' (注水). Sharp-eyed Redditors — well, NGA users — also noticed that Er Guan seemingly made overnight edits to his video after the backlash hit.
To be fair, some voices of reason pointed out that third-party revenue estimates are inherently imprecise — 'it's not like anyone walked into their office and grabbed the real spreadsheets.' But critics immediately fired back: Er Guan's fans had previously paraded his data as 'insider intel from industry experts' and used his videos to mock Tower of Fantasy as a 'dead game walking.' Now that the numbers don't add up, suddenly it's just a 'rough estimate'? Others dug up instances where Er Guan himself boasted about having 'industry big shots in his WeChat contacts' to lend credibility to his data.
The most jaw-dropping escalation? According to comment #8, Er Guan's diehard fans allegedly started claiming that Perfect World's official financial reports were fraudulent — accusing a publicly listed company on the A-share market of cooking the books. That's not just a spicy take; that's a felony-level accusation in China's securities market. As one stunned commenter put it: 'Fabricating financial reports? Doesn't that land you in prison?' (Spoiler: yes, it absolutely can.)
Of course, there were also the moderate voices saying this is all much ado about nothing — 'how many hundreds of replies and everyone's still arguing with numbers that appeared out of thin air.' Some players also contributed PS (PlayStation) server revenue estimates of around 200 million RMB that weren't factored into the discussion.
As of now, Er Guan has offered no further clarification on his methodology or the specific discrepancies. The whole saga is a masterclass in gaming community dynamics: when a data analyst's fans start accusing publicly listed companies of financial fraud to defend their idol's spreadsheet, you know the drama has transcended data entirely.
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